


Together or Nothing

by Terion



Series: Tales from the Emerald Dream [3]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, Pre-World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22120375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terion/pseuds/Terion
Summary: Lymalis Duskstrider has always done what she believed was best for her little brother. Hresden was her world after the loss of their parents. She raised him with her own hands, helped make him the man he was. When she fell to her addiction, she believed leaving Theramoreand himbehind would be what was best for him.She waswrong.
Series: Tales from the Emerald Dream [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/598927





	Together or Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting complete on my computer for a while so here goes publishing it. I'm not currently still working on the series itself but I may return to it in the future.

She had thought that she could make it through the disgusted looks and the sneering commentary. That her own kind would eventually forget that she had had a momentary surrender, that she had  _ once _ been in a bad enough state of jitters and shakes that she had given into the endless seeming emptiness inside of her since the Sunwell had been taken from them.

Then Lymalis had heard the first cruel whispers about her little brother. Of how he would obviously fall too, being a mage. Of how he was of the same flesh and blood, so surely of the same weaknesses.

And hadn’t their father disappeared, gone without a trace or a word?

Hadn’t their mother died long before her time, body wasting away of a broken heart?

Obviously, some hissed, the Duskstriders were  _ weak _ . And her failing was just more proof.

Her teeth ground together as she thought of those words, her hands occupied still with the folding of what clothes she had obtained since they had settled in Theramore. There was a pile of them - all crisp lines and folds, product of the military precision drilled into every Ranger - on her bed, ready to be packed into her saddlebags.

She would not allow her failing to bring her brother low. He was still a child in many ways and perhaps always would be in her eyes. Her own two hands had fed him and clothed him and raised him after their mother had died after all.

And he had a good teacher here in Theramore, a man who could help him become a great mage in the future. Hresden had the capability if he but had the opportunity...and Lymalis feared he would not get that chance if she stayed. That those who looked down on her for what had happened would spread their dislike to him.

It would hurt them but they would survive. As they had survived so much else, they could surely make it through this as well.

Sighing, she finished folding the last tunic she owned and laid it on top of the pile. Lymalis then pulled her empty saddlebags across the bed and began carefully packing the clothes into one of them, making sure to tuck them in as tightly as possible to ensure that she had all possible space available. Just as she finished, she heard the frantic sound of boots pounding up the stairs towards her room and she knew _ exactly _ who it was.

Apparently his tentative friendship with one of the few elves who didn't sneer at her behind her back hadn't been strong enough. She had hoped to at least have all of her belongings packed before Hresden found out.

"Lym!" her little brother called out frantically as he crested the top of the stairs. The fear in his voice as he called out the one nickname she _ somewhat _ tolerated, though only from some (that some being only him at this point with both parents and her entire Ranger squad dead), made her willpower to do what she planned stutter. Their parents had already left him before he was born or coherent enough to realize who they were. He was all she had of family.

How could she leave him?

How  _ could she. _

_ It’s better _ , she reminded herself as she turned to face him. Hresden was leaning heavily on her door frame, breathing hard as if he’d run across the whole of Theramore. And he very well might have given she was across the city from where the mages congregated. He had flung open the clasps on his robes as he ran, leaving them hanging in a disheveled state around his shoulders, to show off the sturdy pants and tunic he wore underneath along with the good sturdy leather knee-high boots.

_ She _ had taught him that good sturdy boots were the best thing he could purchase. That they or good steel was what he should invest in because they might just save his life.

“Lym,” he gasped, as he tried to catch his breath. Then he looked up at her, his green eyes confused as well as full of fear, and said, “Kylin...Kylin told me you were  _ leaving _ . I told him he was a rotten liar. I  _ told him _ ...”

Then Hresden’s eyes drifted past her, to the saddlebags sitting on her bed and the other things piled upon it that she hadn’t yet packed, and his voice caught before he breathed, “But I guess he was right.”

Lymalis lifted her chin slightly and confirmed, “He was right.”

“Why?!” he exploded, taking a step forward as he finally straightened up, his hands flailing slightly in his exasperation. “Is this about what happened weeks ago?”

“It is, little brother.”

“They’re all  _ idiots _ ,” he snapped. Hresden’s eyebrows furrowed in annoyance as he continued, “Idiots who don’t know  _ shit _ .”

Scowling at his words, she hissed, “Some of them are your peers, Hresden. Have some respect.”

He jerked back like she’d struck him a blow before snarling, “ _ Respect? _ You want me to have _ respect _ towards those who are already calling you an addict where I can hear them? That say that _ all it takes is just one sip and you're Wretched _ ? That look at _ me _ as if I'm some sort of  _ monster _ about to turn around and drain them of mana myself, to quench a hunger I barely even _ feel _ most days?!”

In the wake left behind from his wrathful words, she could hear their father. He had always been the one with the temper, the one to go off like a swift arrow from her bow, and she had always known Hresden had inherited that temper in some form. It was what gave him his temperament for fire magic.

Lymalis, however, had their mother's easy temper and a spine of steel that the Rangers had helped form into a weapon of its own. Not to mention that she had raised her little brother with her own two hands...and had well taught him not to bow up to her. Magic or no magic, her word was _ law _ in their home.

Or so it had been when they  _ had _ a home.

Calmly she stated, "This is what I feared, what I wanted to take with me when I left.”

Hresden scoffed at that, shaking his head. "You seriously think that they'll just... _ forget _ ? I know you're not that naive, sister.”

"You have a _ chance _ here…” she began, only to be swiftly interrupted.

"For _ what _ ?!" he exploded. "Being an Alliance lapdog?”

Her hand was raised in warning almost before Lymalis had realized she had moved. Hresden didn't even flinch, since she had never raised her hand to strike him ever in his life.

"Do not speak of those who took us in like that," she hissed. "I raised you to be  _ better _ than that.” At that he flinched, just a little, and she knew that she had struck a chord.

Sighing heavily, Lymalis dropped her hand before saying softly, "I'm trying to look after you, Den. If I leave…”

" _ Don't _ ," he gasped, voice abruptly broken and she  _ knew _ . His anger wasn't at her leaving or even towards those who had insulted her. No, who had insulted both of them. His anger wasn't even _ anger _ at all.

It was _ fear _ .

Taking a slow step forward, she held out her hands towards Hresden as an invitation. His were shaking as he reached out to take her own, Iong fingers and overly hot palms engulfing her much smaller hands. Then she was dragging him forward into her arms, wrapping them around his chest as she bowed her head forward so her forehead rested against the top of his sternum. There she could feel and hear his ragged breathing, knowing he was edging towards the start of one of the panics that had plagued him since Silvermoon fell but not quite there yet.

“I’m sorry, Den,” she breathed, closing her eyes. “I was just trying to do what I thought was best for you.”

He let out a heavy exhalation of breath and then his arms closed hard around her, hugging her tightly against his chest. Lymalis felt his nose against the top of her head amongst her hair a moment later and knew her brother had bowed his head to rest it against hers.

“Best for me,” Hresden replied, his voice strained and shaking, “is you being around, Lym. I don’t... _ I don’t _ ...I  _ can’t  _ do this alone. Not without you.”

Sighing, she softly pointed out, "If I stay things are only going to get worse." This she knew for certain. Their people were not forgiving of those who gave in to the hunger that plagued them since the taking of the Sunwell, viewing it as a weakness. And she had only witnessed the reactions to her grow stronger the longer she lingered in Theramore. “If you  _ stay _ , you can…”

His arms tightened around her before he hissed, “I  _ won’t _ . If you go, I go.”

“Den…”

“Don’t you  _ understand _ , Lym?”

She admittedly didn’t. Lymalis had raised him, had taught him as best she knew how, had made certain that he pursued a magical education when his power had showed itself...but sometimes she failed to understand how his mind worked. She was direct, an arrow going straight to a target, while he was anything but, always moving like a flame.

Hresden must have taken her silence in that moment as her admittance that she didn’t and she felt his arms tighten around her. His breath was suddenly hot on her left ear as he breathed into it, “ _ You _ are all I have left. My home. My people. Everyone else can fucking  _ rot _ so long as I have you, sister.”

_ Oh. _

She had been trying to do what she thought was best for him...and had nearly broken him.

Tightening her grip around him as well, Lymalis sighed before saying, “I was merely thinking of all the good you could do here. Of the mage you could become here. I wasn’t thinking of what my leaving might mean to you.”

Hresden let out a broken sounding laugh at that. He choked on it for a moment then stated, “That’s because you’re an overly analytical mother figure. I've always known that.”

She let out a little huff of a laugh at that because she _ was _ . It was part of what made her a good tracker, the fact that she constantly analyzed her surroundings and the movements those around her. Then she frowned and asked, “What about your teacher? What about your life here?”

Lymalis felt him shrug before he answered. "Cadius is a good man and he's taught me a few things I hadn't learned before since they weren't a part of the 'long curriculum’ until later."

The so-called 'long curriculum’ was one thing she never quite understood about how the mages in Silvermoon had been taught. While her own training and testing period before being fully declared a Ranger had been ten years, Hresden had been considered a trainee by their people for nearly twenty. Whereas his human teacher that he had been accepted under in Theramore - much to the ire of their own surviving mages - had been a full mage for the last _ thirty _ and Cadius was not that much older than her brother. It was one of those things that made her think they were perhaps blinded by thanks to their long lives.

"But," Hresden continued, jarring her from her thoughts, "I'm certain I could find a mage or two amongst the Horde who could do the same.”

His words made her stiffen because how did he suddenly know what her plan was? She had given him no reason to believe that was where her path was leading after she left Theramore.

Shifting her weight back, Lymalis pulled away from him so she could look up at his face. Hresden chuckled as soon as she did then asked, "You think I haven't heard the rumors of a recovering Silvermoon joining the Horde soon? I  _ can _ put two and two together, Lym. Not to mention that almost every older person except you is angry about it.”

"I was at first," she admitted. "Before…” She just let her voice trail off after the first word. He knew what she had done. There was no need to go into it again.

Hresden nodded simply in response then slowly pulled her back fully against him. She allowed it, abruptly weary, and leaned heavily against his chest. It took a moment before Lymalis realized that her eyes and cheeks were wet.

Deep down she had wanted to ask him, wanted her little brother with her. Mostly to continue keeping him near, keeping him safe as she had done his whole life. She had set her own wants aside, however, to try and do what was best for him.

It felt absurd to be soothed by his refusal to stay.

"You should think about this," she said softly. He let out a little huff of breath in response and she felt his chin settle on top of her head. When he remained silent she realized. "You already have.”

Lymalis felt him shrug then he said, "Always have a backup plan if you're not sure of where you're at. You taught me that.”

Nodding, she confirmed, "I did. Though I dislike that this must be our backup plan at all.”

"Not your fault everyone else is an ass, Lym.” Hresden's arms tightened around her again briefly in a hug before he added softly, "We'll be fine. Nothing else matters so long as we're together, right?”

That was what she had always said when he was younger, back when he'd first learned that their parents were no longer with them. She had climbed into his bed, cuddling him close and spoke those words with the same reverence she had given her oath to serve as a Ranger with.  _ We're together, right, little Den? _ she'd always asked. He had always nodded before replying in his childish treble,  _ Yes, Lym. _ And she hugged him close before saying assuredly, _ Then nothing else matters. _

"Right," she agreed, before leaning back to look up at him. Hresden grinned down at her and _ that _ was purely their mother right there. He had the same reassuring smile as her that said everything would be all right, even when things were at their worst.

As she had thought earlier, they would survive this. After so much else that they had faced in their lives, they could make it through this as well.

The Duskstriders were _ not _ weak...and they would prove it by surviving.


End file.
